


Shattered,reborn,reversed

by AristariaFalnaErshan



Series: Rewriting regrets and mending fate [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Actually everyone is kinda confused, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Annabeth Feels, BAMF Percy, But really slow build, But still an oblivious dork, Canon Rewrite, Fluff and Angst, Gaea is crafty, He is more mature, Initial Percabeth, Lots of prophecy drama, Multi, Nico di Angelo is confused, Percy Jackson is a Mess, Pining and obsession, Poor Nico, Sorry Annabeth, The Fates are acting weird, The Last Olympian, but they break up, eventual percico, seriously Percy has no idea about romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28360239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AristariaFalnaErshan/pseuds/AristariaFalnaErshan
Summary: The irony of life is that you never know how much something means to you until the moment you lose it all and all it is left is the haunting realization echoing in your head that you NEVER cared nearly enough.Nico di Angelo was, is, and always will be Percy Jackson's biggest regret. His largest What-if. His grandest failure.His everlasting ghost.And now, he finally has a chance to change that, to redeem himself, to finally pull his freaking act together like the hero he's supposed to be, to save the boy he should have died saving.But the Fates never bestow mercy and the consequences of rewriting history aren't always what you plan.And with only a week left to the start of the Titan War, Percy does not have time on his side. Will he be able to avoid his mistakes this time or will a much darker fate be written by his demons.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Nico di Angelo/Percy Jackson, Silena Beauregard/Charles Beckendorf, others may be added - Relationship
Series: Rewriting regrets and mending fate [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2076930
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All rights reserved to Rick Riordan. I'm just doing this for fun. I do not know what a beta is so I'll leave it there. This is my first work in this fandom and I'm pretty excited to see where this'll land. Buckle up mates, this is gonna be a helluva ride.

The first thing Percy registers when he wakes up is a sickeningly sweet aftertaste lingering in his morning breath. It makes him gag as he instinctively kicks away the flimsy blanket clutching his body and jumps down on the cold floor automatically assuming a crouching stance. Like a built-in program, his fingers creep down his thigh searching for that deadly slit of fabric that secured his favorite trump card. But as he apparently starts groping his entire body in search of the tiniest hint of a pocket, the second realization of the day dawns on him. Well, a second realization that is pretty closely followed a third and a fourth and a fifth and Percy Jackson was officially awake and kicking. Which unfortunately meant that he had to spend at least twelve hours as a breathing, functioning, and _freaking normal_ human adult. Or, at least pretend to because he did not want his awesome friends and his too-good-to-be-true beautiful, amazing, freakishly strong girlfriend to worry about him, or worse, to pity him.

Swallowing down his morning dose of depressing thoughts, he slowly stretched his needlessly tense muscles and walked down to the hallway dine, as _leisurely_ as possible. He noticed that the table was bare and last night's dishes were still swimming in the sink. Well, on the bright side, it meant that no one had come over early in the day to drag his ass out in the sun or torture him by making him sit in front of a black screen TV while they ranted ways to cope with his.... multiple emotional issues.

On the sore side, it meant _he_ had to make breakfast and do the dishes-from two meals. Well, not that things couldn't be any worse. Percy decided to keep breakfast as simple as he could so he won't have much to clean up after. That probably meant he was going to have that lame cereal Hazel had got him the last time with last night's leftover milk. While some blueberry pancakes or waffles sounded delectable, Percy was not in the mood for more chores. His body was starting to catch the numbness of lying in bed for too long, now that the sudden surge of adrenaline had abated.

He tried to pocket his left hand while he rummaged his cupboard with the other one, only to groan in frustration. He kept forgetting that his dad, Chiron, _and_ so-called backstabbing friends had forced him to go into a _weapon probation,_ as they called it. Not mentioning how frustrating it was to live without Riptide or any fairly sharp monster-slaying metal, Percy was slowly discovering the joys of being an ADHD child without having pockets on his clothes. 

Breakfast was quite uneventful and doing the dishes even more so. The only mildly interesting thing that Percy discovered was that he was out of food. It was sort of surprising that none of the seven had actually noticed his dwindling supplies when they frequently came around last week. But apparently, the microwave pizza he had treated himself to last night had been the last one in his house and he had pretty much had "Demigod Delish!" cereal crumbs for breakfast.

Actually, he should've been the first one to notice especially last night. Well, maybe he just didn't care. Percy ran his tongue inside his mouth savoring the still slightly sweet after taste, now heavily clouded by the soury tinge of milk and raspy taste of cereal. His eyes briefly flickered to his faithful locked drawer beside his bed. _The only thing he cared about is that he did not run out of that stuff....and_ according _to last night, he still had plenty to last the month._

Percy let out an exasperated sigh as he mentally scolded himself. _That stuff is the last thing you should be worried about, If anything you should worry about quitting it now before it is too late. What would your friends think, Percy? What would Annabeth think? What would Jason think? What would Hazel think?_

_What about Piper, Frank, Grover, and Reyna?_

_What would his mom think?_

_What would **Nico** think?_

"Ha!" Percy thought to himself. They'd probably laugh at the fact that the great savior of Oluymus was resorting to _cough syrup and sleep pills_ for a coping mechanism. At least the others drank booze at times- that was way more mature.

Percy clicked his tongue in annoyance. This was no time to be thinking about stuff like that, he had bigger concerns! Like he was currently defenseless to, say a revenge-crazed telkhine cult or a stray chimera lured by his scent ( _They are quite easy to be mistaken as stray puppies, do not ask him how he knows)_ or perhaps a stalker fanboy demigod, nymph, or godling (Apparently Tartarus made him famous). Like how Rachel the oracle might gush out yet another doom of the planet prophecy. Like he was starting to have nightmares and vision seizures even when he was dead awake. Like how he might probably, maybe , teeniest tiniest possibly starve if he didn't refill his (junk)food supply.

If he were some normal person, he would go out in the open and do some _mean_ grocery shopping.

But he was Percy Jackson.

So he did the second sanest thing. He called Annabeth Chase. 

Seriously, what would he do without Wise Girl?

*** *** ***

Healing was always more painful than hurting. Percy unwittingly counted the days since they banished Gaea from her own rightful territory. It was surprisingly easy to recollect, considering Percy had always had a bad history with memories. Well, all he had to do is remember the faces and voices he heard every night, after all-not much of a memory lane there.

The TV was on and blaring America’s Got Talent where some rancher from Texas was busy showcasing his band of singing barnyard animals. There was a fast, whirring sound at the corner of the living room where his mini washing machine was finishing up the last round of washing last week’s laundry.

Frankly, if it was a distraction that he was looking for, there were plenty of options. But Percy let his mind wander back to the process of counting years.

Was it … near summer solstice when it finally happened? Yes, probably, because Nico had stopped wearing his signature aviator jacket when they went waltzing with death, er, fighting with bravery and honour. Percy’s eyes jerked towards the window before going back to staring at the TV screen again. They were in summer right now too, maybe not too far from another solstice. Which meant that… Percy silently and patiently recollected his memories… it had been five years. Five whooping glorious tears without a tell-tale omen of doom.

  
Okay, perhaps he was exaggerating. But after surviving two catastrophe scale universal wars and countless near hazard scale godly scuffles, Percy could not blame himself for suddenly having raised standards. Just like he could never-no matter how he tried or how much they pleaded him – come to blame himself for… attempting to cover all cracks. The weapon probation, which by the way sucked, was sort of the last straw attempt actually.

  
A loud siren followed by a clear sign of applause snapped his train of thoughts. Apparently, the rad rancher had now been replaced by a wannabe opera singer and the crowd was going wild. Percy squinted at the TV screen in annoyance, wishing it would shut up. The remote was just across the couch, but he didn’t feel like reaching for it. So instead, he scowled at the blushing singer who was now being praised by the trio of handsome-looking judges.  
Really, Percy did not see the appeal. Sure, the kid was just nine years old, but he had started slaying minotaurs and gorgons since he was like barely twelve. So no big deal.

  
Luckily, before he could judge the contestant any more harshly, a sharp songbird screech stole his attention again. This time, he perked up like a cat splashed with water and almost ran to answer the door.

  
“Took you long enough.” He spoke with a lopsided smirk leaning on the wooden door frame. Familiar grey eyes rolled with a hint of adoration playing around their corners.

  
“I had to dismiss a very tempting offer to immerse myself in the kingdom of knowledge named as Alexandria Library to run your silly errands, seaweed brain, and you dare accuse me of being late? You should be thinking of ways to compensate me instead” Annabeth said with a small smirk as she made her way inside with Percy picking up the grocery bags behind her and closing the door with a soft thud.

“America’s Got Talent, Percy, really? No wonder you’re getting dumber by the day.” Annabeth crinkled her nose before flipping the channel to some science documentary. “ There, much better.”

  
Percy shrugged as he unloaded the white shopping bags on his once again bare dining table.

  
“You forgot my cereal.”

  
“I did not, only kids eat ‘Demigod Delish!’ and did you forget how much you whined to Hazel when she first got you one?”

  
Percy felt his face heat up at the unsavoury remark. It was true that he had felt his adulthood offended when Hazel bought the sugar encrusted yellowish curls of corn flakes with a goofy Roman soldier cartooned on the cover. Heck, it even came with a free action figure (The second reason he felt offended at the cereal was that he had got an Ares one). But that did not change the fact that the sugary flakes of cereal with a slight salty texture and a berryish scent tasted aeons better than the whole oatmeal with raisin and dry fruit stuff he was holding in his hands. Even the cover looked frighteningly academic. He had ditched school for a reason, you know?

  
“Oatmeal is tasteless, dry and naturally just plain sucks. At least Hazel’s cereal was sweet. Like really really sweet!”

  
“ It’s called healthy, seaweed brain, and I don’t think you should be consuming too much sugar, considering your… recent lack of activity.”

  
*** *** *** *** *** ***  
Annabeth spoke out the last part cautiously, turning off the widescreen and casually directing her eyes on Percy, observing and waiting for her boyfriend to react. The air around them had been so care-free, so amicable, so normal, that she had unwittingly let her guard down. Even if it was only for a fracture of a second for her brain to trip, only a minuscule slip of her heedful silver tongue, she knew she had, once again, been too fast-forward.

  
Percy’s cheeks reddened again, this time flushing with rightful anger. His tired eyes that were twinkling with a dull light of mirth now looked like a cloud had stormed over them in a second, his natural quirky smile disappearing in a frown.

  
For a second, Annabeth could have sworn she was holding her breath, waiting, dreading for him to snap back in a painfully sarcastic remark. She knew her lips would once again quiver, with tears intruding the corners of her stormy eyes. She knew that this would not escape Percy’s watchful glare. She knew that he would then, throw a cruel smirk at her direction, a mocking, borderline sadistic expression that would add to the list of things that would haunt her at night until the moment sleep granted her a short, sweet sanctuary (And that was if the nightmares decided to take a vacation instead of invading her walls of fortitude). And that would be her last straw, resulting her to break down in a rant of tears and shouts and Godawful remarks that she would never even dream uttering about Percy, not even in her worst nightmares where she relived those cluster of moments from godsdamn Tartarus. Yet in the corner of her mind, she would whisper loudly, “But this is not Percy, right?” and guilt be darned until she stormed out after another heated argument ( actually more along the lines of a violent verbal war).  
Of course, that did not happen all the times she visited, but she couldn’t help feeling the paranoia for the bomb to tick.

  
To her utter relief, that second never came.

  
The brief storm cloud that came over his expressions floated away like the air between them wasn’t buzzing with stativity. Percy left the unloaded goodies on his dining table and unceremoniously, she daresay casually, flopped beside her on the couch. He ran both of his hands through his sticky-looking and now slightly reddish raven hair and heaved a dramatic sigh.

  
“ Once a wise girl, always a wise girl, huh?”

  
His voice came out in a squeaky way like he had spoken through an outbreak of sudden sobs. But it was light, devoid of mockery, with the perfect dose of the sarcasm she had grown used too. And when he looked at her sideways, she saw the inkling of humour in his muddy seawater eyes.

  
“Well, someone has to keep you alive, dork.”

  
She breathed, now safe from the monsters again.

  
*** *** *** *** ***

  
If Percy said that his reactive muscles didn’t tense after hearing Annabeth say “ recent lack of actions”, he would be a big, fat liar. And he obviously wasn’t fat!

  
But, frankly, he was quite proud of the way he had manoeuvred his emotions and avoided another ugly spat. He was also certain that Annabeth was proud too. The way her dark, pink lips tugged teasingly around the corner as she said something only jokingly sarcastic and her grey eyes glinted with-hope? Nah, that was obviously pride. After all, Annabeth was as fatally prone to pride as he was to loyalty.

  
That simple gesture suddenly made him feel a lot lighter. It was a massive improvement from those sleep pills that only made his head heavier and his mind groggier with illusions of sound sleep. As if that was a thing for demigods!

  
But screw the pills, the empty syrup bottles, the useless groceries that had to go through painful re-arrangements. He drew himself closer to his girlfriend and gently wrapped those half-smiling lips with his own chapped bunch.

  
It was not one of their best kisses, by along. Shoot, It might have even been a tad uncomfortable because of how dry his lips were, but gods, it felt good. How long had it been since he last tasted her coffee flavoured lips, last felt her cold hands wrap around his necks, last saw her smile so… genuinely…after they pulled apart. It may not have been Top Ten Kisses of Percy Jackson stuff, but after all that tension between them, it felt like a small breath of Elysium. And Percy felt himself smiling back like an idiot, Annabeth’s face cupped in his hands.

  
“ I love you,” he said without hesitation, making her eyes shine even brighter and for that split second, everything was normal, everything was perfect.

  
And right dead in that moment, their vision was shattered.

  
Red flooded throughout the apartment and wild screeches started blaring from nowhere. It was loud, ominous, frightening and annoying at the same time. The sound of an emergency siren shaking eardrums again and again like it was going to kick him out of his spot to safety by the power of its incredible loudness.

  
Percy clapped his hands over his ears and glanced at Annabeth to see that she had done the same. For a second, they shared the same, cute feeling of oblivious surprise. But both of them had lived in New Rome long enough to know what the blaring red sirens meant and being demigods, it didn’t take them long to catch on.

  
Instantly, Percy felt his stomach sink to the bottom of its pit as waves of nausea and adrenaline fought to take control of his body.  
He looked at Annabeth with a face pleading her for a different explanation, pleading her to tell him that he was just misunderstanding, that he was just overreacting. He pleaded to be wrong about what was happening. Annabeth simply looked back at him like she had just spotted a ghost and was terrified as well as stunned at the realization. The desperation scribbled over her face was a pure betrayal.

  
They stared at each other blankly for the time, leaving both of them hanging over a question mark none of them wanted to acknowledge. The blaring of the siren seems duller in his head with every passing second. His muscles had already gone rigid from the dual excitation and numbness.

  
As always, Annabeth had been the one to break the stalemate

.  
“Monsters,” she deadpanned, “ We should get cover before they get to us”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far, we only have zero plot progression some rantings about a very depressed Pery Jackson. But I promise it gets better. As you can guess, something terribly wrong happened in the giant war. You'll get some clues in the next chapter.  
> Currently, the Percabeth is strong here, but the cracks are evident and we will see more of their dynamics later.  
> I am aware that my writing is a bit rusty but hopefully nothing too cringy. If You have any tips or suggestions or remarks I will be more than happy to hear your constructive criticism.  
> Thanx for dropping by and reading this!


	2. Chapter 2

Good stuff never lasts for long. Even though Percy, naturally, liked to consider himself as a positively optimistic person, he had to admit that it was true. Moments are never meant to be forever. The good, the bad, the ugly- they all fade away eventually.

  
**_The rest he blamed on his eternally doomed luck._ **

  
One moment he’s being all sweet with his girlfriend and it seemed like they were finally getting back to the tempo that had been swept aside ever since the War. Then the next thing he knows that he’s drowning in a flood of red lights and sirens with the threat of a potential monster with lethal intentions rampaging inside the building. The sirens were especially worse. Percy was never quite thrilled about the concept of sirens-the living kind or the dead(??) kind.

 _For starters, Sirens were loud_.

  
Percy’s ears rang as he shuffled his way towards the emergency exit, hand in tow with Annabeth. There wasn’t necessarily any rush in their gait. The situation would look utterly normal to a bystander, if without the red haze and the loudness of the alarm sending synthetic waves of terror through the air.  
The alarms were supposed to be enchanted. Percy wondered if they could actually create panic in people’s heart (Or maybe the monsters’…if that was what it was supposed to do). Not that he felt any mentionable nut he could clearly hear his heart hammering away in his ribcage. A cold bead of sweat trickle down his neck. He was disconcerted and maybe slightly annoyed. And maybe a little bit like a fish rudely thrown out of the water. His hands felt cold without the hilt of a sword clutched safely in his palm. As a replacement, he squeezed Annabeth’s hands. They were dry.

 _Sirens were bewitchingly distracting_.

  
They forced your train of thoughts to focus on their meaningless wailings while you gladly ended up wasting precious time which you should be using to protect you skin. Percy was torn between standing like a stag in the middle of a road, intently focused on how the siren fluctuated screams and fumbling to open the locked hatch on the emergency exit of his apartment. He felt slim fingers touch his over the cold metal. There was a soft (inaudible because of the screams but he could feel it) clack the door slid open. Annabeth went through first barely widening the crack. He felt a tug in his right hand. “Come on” Annabeth whispered urgently.

  
Percy kept shifting his focus from the now fading screeches coming from behind and the dryness of Annabeth’s palm clashing against the cold sheen of sweat forming in his as they sped down the narrow staircase leading into a tunnel underground. It’s bit of a long way and he notices Annabeth take quite a few turns around, sometimes stopping briefly to open a trapdoor and shut it down again. He leaves the work of navigating to his feet following the tug in hands, almost like a five-year old trailing behind his mother, and scanning the surroundings only to gape at them with uninspired awe. The dimly dark pathway and low ceilings reminded him of the bomb shelters and soldier bunkers he’d seen in World War movies. Granted, their purpose was the same. Percy had never stuck around New Rome long enough to contemplate. Usually a week and a half: a month if he really needed a breather. He’d seen through attacks and invasions like this, plenty of times, should he add.

  
But this was the first time he was running towards the safe room instead of tearing down the building in search of the intruding monster.

Percy had to stifle a growl of frustration as he was once again reminded that he did not have a weapon on him. Screw counselling, screw all the talk about getting rid of paranoia. How can a supposed protector of demigods even entertain the thought about stripping a demigod of the very thing that kept him alive, that kept him safe from being reduced to monster fodder? It was practically like delivering a death sentence!

**_A death sentence_ **

A shiver ran through his spine.

_Is that what they actually want from me?_

_Of course not, Percy._ Stop making stupid guesses just because you’re pissed and frustrated! He shook off that dreadful thought as Annabeth unlocked the final hatch, this time letting go of the hand she’d been holding. Percy used his free hand to run through his ruffled locks as he silently followed into the tiny room already stacked with resident demigods and legacies.

Contrary to his expectations, the atmosphere inside was not static with residual panic or large eyes ogling with terror or people flinching when he and Annabeth took a spot. If he had to pick a word from his limited vocabulary, he’d say that the people were acting almost casual, like they’d already been through this a million times. With a start, Percy realized how true that probably was, especially with godly protections running thin since Gaea demolished the protective barrier that cradled the sanctuary of New Rome for all this time. Sure, after a long round of persuading, bribing and some questionable threatening, they’d managed to re-establish a contract with Terminus. But the god of Rome was still being fickle and evasive. Anyhow, it was not enough. Nowhere was safe anymore. Even Chiron was forced to share his view at this point.

*** *** *** ***

 ** _Something was up._**  
The murmurs were becoming louder. The tension inside the closed space, thicker and Percy noticed that every breath he took was warmer by the second, getting stuck in his throat, forcing him to swallow. People were starting to fidget. Some nervously paced around the floor muttering and waving their hands as they tried to reason themselves into re-assurance. The children were getting restless, thinning the patience of their parents along the process with their whines and pleas.

It wasn’t annoying to Percy, not at the least. It was tortuous, torturous to bear with the growing itch in his mind every time he caught snippets of nervous conversations.

  
An hour had passed and people were starting to worry. Demigods and legacies who were armed and able among the residents had either volunteered to hunt down the imposter, like always (That’s where I should be, Percy mutters violently)or were patrolling somewhere around the periphery of the shelter, a last line of defence to protect the people inside, if the monster(s) manages to stray that far or, gods forbid, the attackers fail.

That’s where Annabeth had sprinted off to right after she had made Percy promise he wouldn’t do anything stupid (like running off to chase a deadly fiend without a scrap of celestial bronze on him).  
So there he was stuck with his growing anxiety and the likes of people who had lost their fighting edge, were healers or archers in combat, too old or young to slay a beast and the sick. And probably some lost causes like himself, who were obviously exceptions, though not as rare as one would think.

Percy solemnly nodded to a teen around an isolated corner as to prove the point. It was a boy, probably seventeen, with the signature mousy hair and baby blue eyes of the Hermes spawn; eyes that he has caught the barest glimpse off before they were clouded in a storm so misty tears and lost within the false safety of his hands. The kid kept switching between fits of hysteric laughter and downright pathetic sobbing. He had almost let out a scream at one point before the nearest pair of hands, luckily, wrapped round his mouth in time. Percy remembered wincing slightly as the said pair of hands dealt a swift chop to the boy’s neck rendering him unconscious and sprawled over the cold floor. Least he had some dignity to prop the kid’s back against the wall where he was currently dozing off in peace.

“ _Oh, that’s Regan_.”

A kind voice snapped near his ears like elastic. He jerked his face to stare down a pretty middle-aged woman carrying a baby strapped to her chest. She offered a smile when their eyes met.  
“We use to be neighbours before I stepped over to the seventh floor after Antae here was born”, she fondly caressed the little bundle of joy snuggled in her breast, “Didn’t want to risk any infant complications with the poor guy screaming his guts out every night.” She scrunched her face up, hopefully in pity.

  
“He has panic attacks?”

  
Percy found himself whispering back to the lady. Her eyes sparkled in sympathy

.  
“Every night. Used to wake up the whole quarter during the worst ones. No one knows much why though, kid never talks much and we know better than to pry answers from a traumatised demigod. Gods bless us, we all have our own share of ugliness.”

“Well, I guess at least you have something to light it up.” She smiled at the mention of her baby.

  
“Yeah, I do. Carried her and then fed her up all by myself. She’s a bit of a slow bloomer but she’ll be two this august and I’m just so…. oh! I haven’t even told you my name! Fates be damned!” Percy chuckled and slowly shook his head.

“It’s all right, I haven’t introduced myself yet.” It had been some time since he’d talked to someone new.

“I’m Percival. Go as civvie??” Percy internally cringed at the makeshift alias he conjured from the wind. The lady, however, didn’t seem to mind much, for which he was very grateful. She offered up yet another of her smiles and went on with her own honours.

  
“Well, Percival, I am Sandra and this here is Antaea. Though I’d think you were more of a Percy.”

  
“Please, gods, don’t take me there.”

  
They both shared a laugh as quietly as they could in the room without causing a tremor.

“Demigod or legacy?”

“None, actually,” Sandra answered with the hint of a smirk playing on her lips. “Though my ex was a son of Ceres. Real shocker for me when he just up and vanished after Antae came in here. You’d think the Ceres ones would be more of a family guy, huh?” Percy probably should have said a yes in return. Pity he was too busy blinking in surprise.

“ _You’re mortal_?”

“Yeah, a mortal with clear sight no less. She smiled at the mused expression on Percy’s face.

  
“There are quite a bunch of us in New Rome. This used to be the safest place for those who can see gods before a while, after all… And the harpy wasn’t always around.”

  
If Percy had been surprised at the reveal of mortals living alongside godlings in New Rome, he was totally thrown off his footing at the later revelation. While Ella wasn’t around….

  
_“The sibylline prophecies_.” He muttered as the lady beamed at him like he had just called her baby cute.

  
“Yes, those prophecies. Our clear sight offers us a special privilege of gaining some exclusive insight into the prophecies that you demigods cannot see. Though not al of us are possessed by the spirit of Delphi, we are in a way, _touched by it_ , as I like to think. There are these precognitive urges we tend to get, stronger in some cases.” Percy followed her words with a sort of fascination that he hadn’t felt ever since Chiron cut him off from Rachel and Ella. The ideas and suggestions were already beginning to assault his mind but he firmly instructed himself to bury it deep for later (preferably never, Annabeth bossed her way in his mind). For now, he didn’t want to scare this nice woman off with his obsession for the Third Great Prophecy or whatever speculations about the next great doom.  
Instead, he veered for a natural conversation.

  
“How’d you know I’m a demigod?”

  
“You looked like you had swallowed a fly when I told you I was mortal. It wasn’t that hard to guess.”

  
“Oh, well, that makes sense.” Percy said scratching the back of his neck. His eyes fell on the baby in her arms and he felt a comfortable warmth seep through his bones as he watched her sleep content tucked in the safest place she could be in- a mother’s arms.

  
“Can I-…”

  
“Pinch her cheeks?” The woman, Sandra, finished his sentence for him and smiled kindly. “Sure, go ahead. I swear she sleeps like a pile of bricks.”

Percy’s heart fluttered a bit as he returned the amiable smile with a grin of his own and very, very gingerly, brushed his calloused fingertips along the lines of soft toddler skin. It felt like warm butter-roasted in mild heat and Percy was lost sure that if he applied the slightest more pressure, her cheeks would melt in a puddle of goo. Baby Antae didn’t seem to mind the invasion on her fluffy cheeks. She just made a small whimpering sound before rolling deeper into her mother’s embrace.

She looked so beautiful, so peaceful, so different from all that Percy has seen in these years.

  
And so much like the dreams Percy used to believe in when he was sixteen and with stars in his eyes, ready to take on the world (quite literally) if that meant he could finally settle down, finally be free from all the godly obligations.

  
The only difference now is that Percy is seriously dubious about taking on the world for a second round and he, by no means, wants to retire from the job that was forced upon him when he was twelve and just confused.

Percy smiled at the baby, struck with a sudden sense of melancholy.

 ** _His mother was supposed to have a baby_**. Due in four months, according to their inspections.

  
When Percy heard that news, he wasn’t sure if he should cry harder or just smile wistfully behind the curtain of tears. He ended up settling for a dry chuckle as he passed a glare at the passive face of the bearer of the news.

  
Nico di Angelo, who stood at a comfortable distance, in his usual stance, with the same unreadable poker face he always wore around Percy. It was as if the weight of hat he had just done didn’t put a scratch on him. His demeanour was guarded, distant, …maybe sorrowful but that was how he always looked, to Percy.  
It was infuriating, nauseating.

He felt angry with Nico for acting with such nonchalance when his words had made Percy’s entire world tumbling down.

  
He felt angry with the gods to let such a tragedy befall him when he had thrown away everything to play their champion.

  
He felt angry with Gaea and the giants who orchestrated the murder (too light…too light…), so angry that the only thing that kept him from storming into the enemy base and raining hell on them was his unmovable grief that surprisingly anchored him to his last strand of remaining sanity.

  
_But more than anyone_ , he felt angry with himself, _livid_ with the bare fact of his own ignorance, his own incompetence, his own …worthlessness.

  
_He shouldn’t have forgotten_. _He shouldn’t have ignored_. He shouldn’t have stayed in camp, after their initial victory. He should have run to his mom’s apartment in Manhattan the moment he had gotten the smallest balcony of chance. He should have checked on them, he should have protected them.

_**he should have protected them.** _

But in the end, it was all the same.(Wasn’t it?) Percy Jackson was never a saviour. He was built a tool, a warrior, a champion of the gods. He was not a hero. More not so to the ones that trusted him the most. Because every, _each and everyone that had been stupid enough to do so_ , ha ha…, they’d mostly ended up dead or terribly scarred beyond repair.

  
_He didn’t deserve their love; he didn’t deserve their forgiveness._

  
Suddenly, the memories of the Arai were starting to seem quite appealing. They at least could see him the way he was. They at least were capable of treating him with the brutal honesty he deserved.

  
Annabeth had been there too, right beside him, squeezing his shoulders in a silent gesture of support. Her hands were firmly encased in Percy’s in a tightened grip, but not as tight as he clenched his teeth to fight his angry tears.

 _He didn’t want her sympathy_ ; he didn’t want her comforting company. For now, he just wanted to be hated, to be loathed, to be treated as the horrible person he was, for the horrible crime he had accidentally, coincidently committed. He wanted anger, spite all directed at him, slicing, scathing, wounding.

  
He spat at Nico, the best thing he could do.

“ _What gives you the right to talk about this_! What gives you the right to talk like nothing just happened,!” He hissed out the last insult.

, "Why did you come back when you clearly couldn't do anything!"

Later, much later, he would regret every word he spoke to him that day. But Percy had been hurting and it made sense that at that moment, it made sense that everyone should be hurting.But even if Nico was hurt by his words, he didn’t flinch as a reaction.Instead, his return had been as steely as his narrowed eyes.

  
“ _On the contrary, I believe that I have the most right be here, Perseus._ ”,

  
_Observing but not judging._

  
_cold but not harsh._

  
_hating but not draining._

  
**_It was obvious._ **He didn’t blame him.

It was obvious that he too had forgiven him, let him off the hook because, after all, he could he have known something like this would have happened.

 _“I hate you_ ”

  
_“Believe me, the feeling runs mutual, much, more than you know.”_

  
He has collapsed on his knees after that exchange, drained from the tears that he had shed and the constant leech of self-loathing clinging to his heart.  
He fell down and curled himself in a foetus position on the earth drenched with his own tears. Annabeth had sat beside him and Nico had stood far away in the distance, unmoving, unflinching, like marble, like the obsidian in his eyes, still and devoid of pity or sympathy. _**He knows.**_

  
It was cruel, unfair and Percy had never felt more jealous of the son of Hades in that moment.

_**He understands (it’s my fault he does though…)** _

  
Nico had gone through everything Percy was experiencing now and much worse at a much younger age and Percy felt inconceivably jealous of his ability to stand there at this time. To move on. To accept death like an old friend instead of making an impossible enemy of it. To stand strong and fight, for a greater sake even if that cause sucked away everything from him leaving him bare, dry, hollow, _unbreakable._

  
“They’re cleaned up, you know.”

  
His voice was ginger and tentative. “ _We_ cleaned them up … _Hazel and I.._. Do you want to see…. just one last time?”

  
**_Oh, how I wish._ **

Percy looked up to meet the younger demigod’s eyes. Dark, misty and stone cold. ( _Is that what his eyes would be looking like from now too?)_ Despite all that he shouted at him, he could sense a silent understanding pass between them.

  
At that moment, he knew that Nico would never, could never blame him just like he never blamed (could never blame) Nico.

  
**_The circle had come around._ **

  
It was winter coming and this time Nico di Angelo delivered the news of passing to Percy Jackson.

  
An unmade promise of protection broken. _Again_.From both their parts. (Still, he’d been the main culprit in both)

  
“Sorry….but I don’t think I’m ready..”

_“Percy, this is not a drill.”_

Once again Percy was surprised at the intensity the boy held at this age, surprised and impressed, though he’ll never speak it out aloud.

  
He bit his lips. It felt awful to let down the boy again. Funnily, that’s how almost every exchange ended between them.

  
“I _can’t_ go then.”

“ _Percy_ -“

“ _Save it_ , you’ll need the breath.”

Percy slipped away his hand from Annabeth’s gentle grip. He was starting to feel too stuffy, suffocated. _(Drowning???_ ). He knew what Nico was going to say, he knew that the younger demigod would surely try to reason with him, force him if needed to accompany him to look at his parents, to meet them again, after nearly a year of vanishing without warning. (She used to think you were dead, ironic how it hit back).

  
Part of Percy acknowledged that he was true.

  
But the pain still felt raw and gnawing on his heart. And a larger part of him knew that he couldn’t bear to see his mom like this. Not like this when the last conversation he had with her was on a payphone.

  
_Not like this_ when he was finally supposed to see her at their home, over blue cookies and ice cream.  
Not like this when he was supposed to hug and congratulate her on her baby, not weep bad grieve for it.  
_No_ t when he was supposed to protect her at all costs and he failed, in the most miserable way exist able, at it.

“Go on with the funeral rites. I need some time on my own.”

Annabeth’s eyes had widened in surprise. Nico looked like he still wanted to pitch in an argument, but a flicker of understanding dawned his expressions and he settled for a nod.

He didn’t shadow travel away immediately, though.

  
“I know this is no place for me to say this……but……gods, Percy, they look beautiful, so beautiful, I…I…I have never seen anything like it.” He took a deep breath before speaking out the last words. “Their souls…they…. they’re in peace. Not in Elysium, not in the underworld,”  
He paused for the ghost of a smile to brush by.  
“They’re in Heaven, someplace much much better, this much I’m certain I can feel.”

Before Percy could thank him and say that he was sorry for being a jerk(again), he slipped into the nearest shadow and ghosted away.

Percy doesn’t regret the choice he made that day. He wanted the image of his mom to stay untainted in his mind and it did, still is.  
Sally Jackson had been the rock for Percy in his hardest times and even in her death, she was holding Percy together, spirting him to keep up the fight, to live and stay alive for her sake.

Looking at Antae sleeping peacefully with a mother by her side to lay down her life for her, Percy was reminded hof the life he had dreamt to have, of the hopes that he used to bear and the reason he still holds on, even after losing almost all of that which made him whole.  
He had made a new promise after all. And promises are what keep us alive.

“She’s precious,” he said in a gasp of breath. “I know,” Sandra murmured beside him, eyes on her child lovingly.

*** *** ***

Time had been a bit easier to pass after he had become chatty enough with Sandra. Mostly they shared the numerous gossips ably his fellow flatmates ND residents-The usual dating scandals, couple spats, monster kills, exotic pets, weird hobbies and whatnot. Sandra was mortified to hear he lived on an almost empty floor, despite his assurances that the floor was haunted and the spirit did not appreciate much crowd. _(Oh, you're demigods aren’t you?)_ You’ve handled much more than vengeful ghosts). It was quite fun, and it helped him ignore the very loud indeed titter rising in the room. In fact, he’d almost forgotten about the songster until Sandra brought it up.

“They are taking awfully long, huh?”

  
“Uh-yeah?” Percy blinked off guard. Shit. He mentally cursed himself for forgetting and checked his handwatch in a hurry. His jaw slackened a bit when he finally made sense of the numbers.

“Holy Hera, it’s been two straight.”

  
“And no one’s still come back,” Sandra spoke in a worried tone. Percy began chewing on his fingers. This was bad. This was really bad. He couldn’t stay here anymore, no, he had to go out and check. What if the monster was too much to handle, what if someone got injured and they lost the manpower they need to win…what if Annabeth, NO.

  
_Don’t go there. Don’t go there. Don’t go there._

  
Percy bit hard into his thumb drawing blood. He tried to reason. Look, you don’t have riptide with you either. So you’ll only be dragging dead weight if you go. Besides, Annabeth was more than capable to save herself, right? _Right?_

 _Damn,_ sword or not, Percy was mentally prepared to storm out of the room to check things out but the second before he sprung his plans to action, the door barged open, and a group of demigods barged in, Annabeth in lead. Panic broke out in the room the moment they came in, all carrying burns of different degrees on their skin. Percy pushed through the crowd, he didn’t have the luxury for decency and found Annabeth to clasp her arms before she dropped to her knees breathing loudly. “What is it?” he whispered urgently, sea-green eyes piercing into the storm gravy ones after scanning her body for similar injuries (0 found, thank gods). Annabeth looked stunned for a moment, her eyes slipping sideways before locking with Percy again.

“Fourth floor’s in flames. We couldn’t get in. Some of the residents tried, but then the flames got stronger and exploded and then we just carried them back here.”

  
She pursed her lips, the way she does when she’s analysing a situation.

  
“We contacted the nearest CDD force, they’re on their way with a fire hydrant.... we should stay here until three checks if they can bring the fire under control, we’ll be safe underground, it won’t reach this far, unless…. What- _Percy_! **NO**! _What are you thinking! Come back you seaweed brain_! Ah, Zeus be damned! _Don’t go running off your own!”_

Percy didn’t hear her shouts. He was already too far for it, zooming through the twists and turns, finally finding the northern stairs. Before sprinting to a climb, he ran his fingers against the wall, calling for the water in the nearby pipes. They answered and once he was sure with his senses, he ran towards the fourth floor, holding an unbalanced, rapier-like sword he’d borrowed from one of the injured demigods.

He knew Annabeth would be livid after he came back, but there was no other way. **_Tzakioú_**. He whispered in his mind. _Hearth’s bane_. Fire demons. And they needed a son of Poseidon or Hephaestus to slay them. _He had to do it_. And he had to do it fast before the demon sensed its way to the massive reserve of life underground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry guys, but I swear the next part will be the last in this timeline. I really wanted to patch things up in this chapter, but then it ended up being way longer than I first estimated. On a side note, there are no fire demons or tzakiuo in Greek myths, I totally made that up.  
> Ha-ha, anyways, enjoy and leave a comment if you want.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so, back when I merged chapters 1 and 2, I think I accidentally wiped out one of the comments. I'm so sorry for that and can I just say that I really loved that particular comment and thank you to the kind person who posted that cause it really inspired me to continue this. Same to all the others who've read and kudosed this story. Thanks for sticking by and sorry it took so long to update.

_What comes to your mind, when you think of fire?_

For Percy, it was at first, the flash of an impish grin followed by a cascade of the most obnoxious puns and jokes a person (or divine being, for the matter) could think of.

Then, it was red, red and yellow, as it swirled across the barren war field, alighting wood of the nearby dryads, erupting from canons in explosions of blue, melting on the skins o monster and human alike, deathly screams and shrieks till it all turned ash and black, _indiscriminate._

Then, the violent red mellows down, warm and gentle, _orange_ , as memories of baked sweetness and loving smiles caress his mind.

Finally, it was what he remembered fire in its truest form, in the bellows of Mt. St. Helens, where he plunged eyes bulging through the molten lava, a shortest glance before they were singed shut with the burning pain. He thought of that molten crimson that engulfed his vision, that sent out-of-the-thermometer heat to every cell in his being, and first time feeling the fear of suffocation, of drowning, even though he, himself practically bore the only water amidst the solid flames.

He did not fear fire. He was a child of the sea, after all, and water was meant to _repel_ fire, to _oppose, and conquer_ it. Not, _fear_ it and run away, avoiding it.

. But, faced with fire, _that_ was a different story entirely. Though he would not say that he was terrified at the sight of the burning hallway, he felt his breath reflexively stun near his throat drawing a weak cough from his lips. It was, less menacing than he had in his mind when he first caught note of the smoke fuming downwards the staircase. Then again, compared to the images grated in his mind, a small apartment fire, no matter how devastating, would be no different to him thin the flickering of a match.

Like the telkhines once said and countless battles later proved, the fire didn’t burn him immediately. The built-up heat didn’t matter much as he built a thin layer of moisture around his skin along the way. Otherwise, Percy could swear there’d be blisters on his skin right now. The air he inhaled was toxic hot and his eyes were already watering from the smoke. _He had to be quick_. Whatever small immunity his oceanic heritage granted him from fire, would not do him much good in the long run. He needed to find the monster behind this hellscape and kill it. Pronto.

But that was the issue, exactly. Where would he find the monster? He could barely see his own way through all the smoke.

“ _Godsdammit_.” Percy was starting to regret running off like some hot-headed fool. He should have waited for Annabeth to give him a run-down of the entire thing at least. Oh man, he could already picture those torturous lectures she would have ready for him once he got out from there. _If he got out from there._

First thing’s first. Percy squinted his eyes and scanned his surroundings for any sign an aggrieved soul plucked straight from Tartarus might leave. (He should know well cause isn’t he technically one too now?) But for the good that it did, he ended up with his vision swimming from the gust of heat and his feet staggered making him rely on his rapier as a walking pole to push him back to balance. He was running out of time.

He moved his feet across the burning mess, eyes and ears peeled for any sign of interference. He raced through his brain for the slightest information that might help. But the trick here was, nobody actually knew much about these Tzakiuo. No mentions in mythology, no recollection from the gods, no nothing. It’s like they suddenly sprang up from the ground one day and decided that things around needed a bit firing up. During the war, monsters like these were practically throwing themselves at Percy and he rarely gave them a second glance before skewering them with riptide. The bodies dissolved and did not leave much space for interrogation. _Néo ellinikó téras_ , Chiron had called them and Percy didn’t care as long as they’d vaporize after meeting his sword.

… …. … Only his sword though. Or if a child of Hephaestus went for the kill. Or if the sword happened to be stygian iron.

Tzakiuo were souls bound to the Phlegeton that escaped before their sentence was over, the gods had later deduced, and were therefore cursed to eternally feel the pain of burning out alive in the currents of the very prison they break out from. It was something not even Hades could deter, the vengeful spirit of the river god Phlegeton who marked his territory within Tartarus. As their souls were ever doomed to burn in undying flames, they would be naturally attracted to untainted sus around them, seeking to burn and devour their essence in the slightest hope of quenching their own flames.

Percy felt his heart drop at the realization. What if the creature had already moved? No, that’d be impossible, he’d _notice_ smoke from the other floors if that had been the case.

He considered blasting some water of the nearby pipes. Maybe the presence of water would piss that thing off enough to make it come out. He was almost about to do that when he heard a shrill scream sound down from the hallway.

One of the apartment doors tore open and slammed against the wall with a loud thud. The scream ensued in horrifying intervals and despite bracing himself for what was about to come, Percy couldn’t stop his stomach from recoiling at the sight.

In the war, he didn’t have time to spare to look upon the face of every monster he slew. But that was not the only reason. In some cases, the monster was better slain in a blindfold.

The Tzakiuo were one of those cases. The worst thing about these monsters, Percy thought, and he’d killed tons of them in the war, was not the fact that they were partially indestructible nor that nothing could make their flames go out till the monster was killed.

It was the fact that their appearance, strikingly, resembled that of man fallen victim to the atrocity of fire. In other words, a burn victim. The most severe kind. That’s what they looked like.

Skin burned to the one in a gruesome charcoal shade. Red bruises strewed in a haze across its torso, bubbling and popping at random like hot, boiling stew. Lidless eyes protruding from the skull in a sightless stare. Mouth hung open in never-ending shrieks of agony and helpless cries for aid. It didn’t look its part of a blood-thirsty monster in the smallest ounce. Percy would almost feel sorry for it if he didn’t notice the ground slowly melting away where it laid foot and the air suddenly pulsating with an outburst of heat.

Like a switch turned on, the monster lunged at him in an instant, its painful facade not betraying its lethal speed and murderous intent. A touch of that blistering black skin would have immediately roasted an adolescent demigod and blown a regular mortal to pieces.

It’s lucky Percy had the experience under his belt. He retracted backward as the monster clawed through blank air. Not wasting the opening, he dug the rapier into its exposed side and with all his strength, swung sideways. A guttural scream left the creature’s mouth and the flames around rocketed upwards in a last, dying flicker. Percy jumped back shaking of his shirt that got caught in the tower of fire. As soon as the soothing fabric left his skin raw and open, burns formed across his chest and Percy winced while trying his best to ignore the searing pain. A couple of feet ahead, after the smoke cleared, he saw the thing writhing on the ground and screaming like there was no tomorrow. Rapier in hand, he went for the kill, slashing its entire midriff in half while whispering a soft “Rest well in hell, my friend.”

A last dying throe shot through his eardrums like a bullet and the hell creature disappeared in a poof of black dust. He felt his hold slacken as the rapier fell out and his knees kissed the ground. The burns all over his body were beginning to look ugly and it was hot as HELL around him. There was that victor’s euphoria guiltily rising in his chest but he was too damn tired to give a damn. He would have already collapsed face-first on the floor if only it hadn’t been burning… … … … wait.

He felt all the blood in his veins freeze in an instant. It was over. He had killed the monster. Then why didn’t the fire go away? Why was everything burning the same way it had before?

On his feet again, Percy reclaimed his weapon and pointed it around as he kept circling for the enemy. His eyes darted to every corner of the room but all he found was the burning ruins laughing at his face leaving traces of warm air. The heat was really getting to his head now. His raw, exposed scene had turned taut and red from the multiple burns. Every inhale of the toxic smoke made it hard to think think clear which was really posing a problem because that was what he needed the most.

Had there been more than one monster? But he’d already killed one! Shouldn’t at least, part of the flames goes away? Or maybe the thing he stabbed…wasn’t actually a monster.

Maybe it really was a burnt human screaming and suffering in actual pain and Percy had just killed him off.

“No, NONONO, no, gods, no, please don’t be that, please, please…”

He couldn’t keep this on anymore. He was pretty sure the fire had gotten through his skin and with the stamina he had left, it’d be impossible to slay another demon. He allowed his legs to succumb as he planted his fist on the nearest wall to keep himself from falling directly into the embrace of the flames. He grit his teeth to stay conscious for just a little more time. Just a few more seconds, and then he’d give up on resisting. Just…one…two…

“Wow, I did not expect that.”

New-born adrenaline rushed towards the source of the sound and Percy blindly thrust out his sword hoping he’d hit a lucky spot. He blinked through the smoke focusing on the thing that had spoken. It wasn’t a monster, not the usual kind, at least. It had the clear looks of a human being, a man to be clear, a pretty tall dude wearing a red velvet suit with a deep purple waistcoat and bow-tie to match with his strawberry red hair that totally looked dyed. Percy couldn’t even label him as a half-blood either, because, other than his loud and definitely not weird style, he looked way too cool considering the fact that they were standing stark in the middle of a fire. He hadn’t even broken a sweat and Percy could swear the room temperature was way past the boiling point.

However, it seemed that he’d landed his lucky shot and the guy in question had to back out to avoid having his throat stuck at sword-point. He smiled in a good-natured way and raised in hands in defense

“Whoa, you really are as feral as they talk nowadays, huh, Perseus Jackson.”

Percy was almost about to ask how the guy knew his name but settled for a simple eye-roll. He’d been through this scene way too many times to be bothered to. It was granted every baddie in town would know his name and just happen to hold some sort of twisted grudge as a bonus pack. Typical privilege for a demigod who’d gone out of as many deadly prophecies unscratched as he had.

Okay, maybe the evil grudge part didn’t count because the dude did not look at him in a particularly vengeful or smug way. If anything, he seemed to be amused, bordering on annoyed by the way his golden eyes scrunched up. They reminded him of Hazel’s but the shade was much much darker than her honey dewed ones. Ignoring his obvious powerless state, Percy moved his stance forward and glared back at the person who kept on wearing an annoyingly unbaffled expression. Really, it would be so much bearable if he just acted smug or snarky or simply maniac evil. This blank face game was starting to tick him and he _already_ had been ticked enough during this week.

“Who are you and what in the dumps of Hades do you want from me?”

Yep, there was no need for formalities and happy hugs. Percy pointed his damaged sword closer to the guy’s throat and shot a pointed glare to add in the intimidating factor. Not that it seemed to be working because the other party hardly looked fazed. If anything he looked amused, like he was watching a cute little puppy snarl with its toothless pink gums. Percy was so tempted to skewer that guy like the demon he had met a while ago but honestly, he himself was fairly doubtful of his odds. Especially when his rapier looked like it could fade to dust at the smallest strike. (Since when did weapon smithing stoop so low! Gosh if Leo still around).

The person studied the glaring demigod in front of him for a while, silently regarding his source of amusement with the slightest hints of a smirk.

“I know what, it must be all the heat, right? Not that I’d know but yeah, the smoke and stuff really gets into your head sometimes, huh?” At this point, Percy was ready to throw all rationality out the window and slash his now crappy excuse for rapier at the dude but he beat him to it. He waved his hand around like swatting a fly and in a blink, all the fire and burning smoke disappeared into thin air and Percy found himself sitting on a burnt sofa of one of the apartment quarters, his rapier well out of sight as well. With the flames gone, the pain of all the burns he’d accumulated hit his senses like an over-speed freight train. But he pinched his arm to keep a straight face because he was sitting just in front of the red-suited weirdo, who now was displaying a full, shameless smirk.

“Now we can talk.”

Percy hoped he hadn’t groaned that dramatically.

*** *** *** ***

Annabeth was never one to grumble and whine but ever since she’d Percy, she’d found a lot of facts around her change. Besides, who wouldn’t grumble if their boyfriend darted off into a hall full of flames with only a flimsy sword to slay a monster who could literally kill you with a touch? Annabeth had almost run off to tail him herself if the offense squad leader hadn’t caught her arm first. He was a beaten up man probably passing his forties and Annabeth only remembered his face because he hurled towards her carrying at least five burnt people on him and his hair was on fire like teeny tiny candles over a butterscotch birthday cake. She respected that. But that did not stop her from shooting him one of her reserved “I will kill you for this” glares. She tried to shake her arm free, but the man was too strong and surprisingly unaffected by her glare (which made her feel a bit offended truth be). He met her raging grey eyes and his own softened when he spoke to her.

“Miss, I know you want to go after your friend right now, but unless you’ve got Hephaestus or Poseidon blood in your skin, you’ll only end up being roasted like a thanksgiving turkey.”

Annabeth’s eyes flared and she almost shouted out when she talked.

“I have to get him back, he’s been out of practice for a week, he’ll get himself killed!”

The man laughed shortly and loosened his grip on her arm which she retreated swiftly.

“A half-blood’s never out of practice, miss, and if your boyfriend went in there knowing there’ll be fire, then I’d reckon he knows what he’s handlin’.”

Annabeth hated how that made perfect sense. Especially, if the building was indeed under attack from a Tzakiuo, then Percy’d be the only one who could kill it. And the seaweed-for-brains idiot had bragged countless times to her that he had some degree of resistance against fire and wasn’t ‘easy to burn’ (gods, do not think of those pick-up lines, do NOT).

Watching Annabeth frown, the squad leader lightly touched her shoulder to get her attention.

“Listen, miss, I know this is an incredibly hard nut for you, but we’ve many wounded and these people here need immediate evac.” He gestured at the frantic horde of unarmed residents. Annabeth curiously spied an unconscious body propped against the wall. A short woman with a pudgy baby was skittering near that man, craning her neck in their direction, like trying to hear what they were talking about. Wasn’t that the woman she saw standing next to Percy?

“…So, anyways I kinda need your help to rally this situation, miss, miss?” Annabeth’s eyes snapped back as she caught on to the leader’s brief lecture and she momentarily felt her cheeks heat up for zoning out.

“I’m sorry but- could you run that again?”

“I was asking you to guard the rear. There aren’t many people in this building who can put up a good fight and most of them sans me are pretty badly burnt. So we’ll do this the Triceratops Foundation- keeping the injured and sick in the middle, offense guards at the front and everyone else behind. The remaining defense squad will be covering for the missing offense members but we need some guy to watch our back.”

Truly, it was a pretty decent plan and any other time Annabeth would wonder ask if he was a descendant of Athena or Minerva. But now every second she wasted breathing meant she couldn’t be with Percy and that scared her insane. Who knew if the seaweed brain hadn’t accidentally knocked his head while going after the monster and was now lying helplessly in the fire, helpless and burning alive.

“I’ll do it, just hurry the process up and _don’t dare_ try to stop me when I go after Percy after this.”

And that’s how she ended up in this place, traversing through the maze-like escape structure while the leader (‘John’, he’d said, ‘just John’) lead them through the turns and twists. Annabeth kept her eyes peeled for any unsuspected monster that might lunge from the shadows but she couldn’t quite put her mind to it. Not while Percy was still unsafe. And not while the baby woman decided to stroll beside her instead of teetering closer towards the center of the group like everyone else. Up close, Annabeth could see that while she wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t ugly either and felt ticked for some reason. Even after six years of faithful dating, she still found it hard to not feel hostile to any moderately beautiful woman who talked to Percy. Moreover, the lady kept stealing these glances at her, like she wanted to ask her something. It was getting really hard to stay neutral. Finally, the lady dropped the bomb.

“Your friend’ll be alright,” she said, “Trust this coming from a Blessed from Apollo’s”

“Boyfriend,” Annabeth found herself correcting before anything else. The lady smiled softly.

“That’s up to you two, dearie. Personally, I’m not a fan of Venus, at least not anymore.” She smiled ruefully. It took Annabeth a few seconds to grasp on what she said.

“I-I’m sorry.” Her cheeks flamed as she muttered an awkward apology for jumping into baseless conclusions. The baby, that smile…it was obvious. But not surprising though. birthing legacies was not as easy as it seemed.

The woman smiled at her softly. “I don’t mind, dear. And personally, I think you two make a sweet couple. Sandra, by the way. And this critter’s Antaea.”

Annabeth nodded and went on with her monster scouting. Soon, their underworld tunnel tour came to an end and she was blinking in hot white sunlight again. They were out. As soon as her eyes had adjusted to the sudden exposure of brightness, she looked at the fourth floor of the building. To her utter relief, there was no sign of fire. Annabeth smiled despite herself, shaking her head as if warding off the last of her ill thoughts.

“Looks like your boy hit the mark…oh, hello Sandra.” Annabeth heard John from her left and turned to see him chatting with Sandra, tones changing as casual talk was quickly set aside for talks of arranging ambulance and knocking on their neighbor’s doors. Annabeth looked back at the building again. Percy had killed the monster that's for sure. He probably collapsed on the stairs or the hallway on his way down and was wasting away there dead out cold.

Ignoring the dark undertones of her thought, Annabeth rushed inside again and started scaling the stairs, skipping two steps at a time. It didn’t take long for her to reach there and it certainly didn’t take long to find Percy inside one of the open quarters. He looked terrible, burns littered across his raw red flesh, and apparently, he’d ditched his shirt somewhere around the corner. He was indeed out cold, but breathing and stable. She let out a sigh of relief as soon as she checked and mentally prepped herself to carry her much heavier and bulkier boyfriend.

“Seriously, Percy, get into trouble a bit less, will you?” She whispered near his ear, hoping he’d hear it in his sleep.

*** *** *** ***

He’s drifting in a space. And where he was standing, it wasn’t just fire around him, (red and dangerous) but a plane of a place that he should know like the palm of his right hand but did not all the same. It stretched on and one, snaking through the red and rotten crimson, stealing, or aiding in its show of glory (or dominance).

It was eerie and familiar, like it beckoned him, and he could almost hear a crooning voice thinning into the black oblivion.

The fire was all around him, in his eyes, his ears, his lungs and his gears, and with each breath he was inhaling fire

And just before the moment he was abbot to tear apart his lips in a gut-wrenching scream, his eyes bolted open and Percy found himself staring at worn out celling, black cracks peeking with age. The mattress under him was smooth but hard and he felt his neck cramp from lying down too long. In a panic frenzy, his eyes darted around the unceremoniously bare room before he attempted to push himself up only to realize he’d been draped with bandages.

“Easy there, dude.” His head instantly cocked towards the voice, expecting familiar blond hair and grey eyes but found gentle blue ones staring at him instead. That made his head hurt a bit.

“What could be the praetor of New Rome be doing in this sorry excuse for a healer room.” His voice came out lower than expected as he pointedly looked at Jason Grace. Though people most of the folks expected them to be at each other’s throats for being the most clashing personas two children of the big three could possibly be, they always got along quite easier than expected, and during the war, it had lent one of their greatest strengths.

well, there was Nico too, but Percy tried not to think much of him. It always opened a Pandora’s box of feelings within him, ones he couldn’t make sense of and ones that made him want to jump back into Tartarus, or the underground, or hell even the pit of chaos if that’s where he could find him. He’d go spiraling beyond control, going off on rouge quests, bugging the hell out of Chiron and Rachel, crying ceaselessly till his tears dried out and would spill no more, and not even Annabeth could cheer him up when that happened.

So, instead of depressing thoughts, he tried focusing on Jason and silently marveled how his appearance reminded him of Luke. Though Luke was a bit taller and lankier with a longish face and, solely in Percy’s opinion, more handsome. He must have been staring because he heard Jason clear his throat loudly and looked down to investigate his bandaged chests.

“How bad were the burns?” He asked.

“Bad enough for the medics to push you into the emergency dept.”

Percy groaned. Killing the fire monster had been the easy part. All that happened next was that stupid god’s fault. At least that’s what he claimed to be when they ‘talked’.

“Where’s Annabeth?”

“Outside the cabin… … with Chiron.” He added with guilt. Percy shot up in a sitting position.

“She called CHIRON!”

“Your burns were pretty bad, Percy. And this kinda concerned your month-long weapon probation too, which you, in fact, promptly broke.”

“It was a freaking emergency!” Percy yelled in frustration. “I mean, you of all people should understand?”

Jason stayed still for a bit, grimacing before he finally got up and headed for the door.

“I’m getting Annabeth. Stay still for a second.”

“oh, please, bring the fairy godmother if you can,” Percy muttered as he saw the door fly close. He ran a bandaged hand through his greasy, singed locks before flopping down on the hard hospital bed again. He was so not in the mood for a double lecture on his stupidness. He knew of that very well already. (Didn’t he get all of them killed because of that, after all?)

His mind wandered off to the conversation he had in the burnt apartment room. Now as the pieces came back, parts of it seemed pretty deeply unsettling to Percy. Especially, the way that man’s eyes had glinted before he poofed out in a torrent of hot air, knocking him out cold. It had been that look that Percy was expecting to see on that guy’s face the moment he had him sword-point. The look of pure evil.

It was a good thing Chiron was here, they needed to talk anyway. He turned his head sideways when he heard the door creak and propped himself in a half-lying position, with his back resting on the hard bed rest.

Annabeth rushed beside him and was holding his hand faster than a blink.

“Are you all-right, Percy?” She asked her voice dripping with concern and Percy felt a pang in his chest.

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m all-right. But…” His eyes went towards Chiron who had trailed after Annabeth, in his wheelchair form, gingery pushed by Jason. “There’s something else we should be worried about.” He whispered that part out.

“Percy!” Chiron’s voice sounded crisp and cheerful, the same as he’s heard it the first time in a history classroom. “It appears you’ve run into trouble again.” He smiled but there was a tired look in his probably millennia-old eyes.

One part of Percy felt guilty for worrying his old mentor with what could be his own assumptions fed by paranoia again. Ever since they finally patched up things with the war (it had taken two years to regroup and rebuild the damages on all sides), Percy had acted desperately paranoid, outlandishly fearing for another great prophecy you drop like a bomb on their heads. And this time he couldn't bear to lose any more lives on it.

He’d traveled across the continent, run away, actually, solo questing and saying whatever remnants of Gaea’s monster force he could find, looking nowhere for some kind of clue some kind of indication of the next big war that was going to hit them. He cut off everyone searching like a madman for any help that would give them precognition to avoid another catastrophe like this. He searched and he ravaged every possible place, but all he ended up doing was following back his own trails to camp half-blood. He rested for a while, tried to get along with Annabeth, help Jason and Hazel back at camp Jupiter, support Chiron as the new ca,p director. He stayed and tried for the summer. Then Annabeth went back to California and he was back on track with his never-ending cycle. Two more years like this.

They’d all tried, tried to tell him that they were at peace now, that Gaea was asleep again and the war was finally over. No one’s going to die anymore. It’s time to accept it. The reality. It was time to move on, time to heal…

“… ** _It'll always be you_** ….”

_Healing_? After all, that he’d seen through? After all those deaths he’d orchestrated?

He tried at first, looking at Annabeth’s pleading eyes, Jason’s helpless stare, Chiron’s soothing words, and Hazel’s empty golden eyes that looked nothing like Nico’s chocolate brown ones.

But after a year or so, it had gotten only worse. He ended up in a spat with the oracle. A spat that was so fearsome that the sun and the clouds clashed violently in the sky, sea bulging out waves as tall a mid-sized darken, light shining out against the grey clouds blinding and darkening as Apollo and Poseidon raged silently against each other. Percy had hit his low and he did the unthinkable. He ended up hurting Rachel, not physically, but the crestfallen look on her face made him wish it had been that. Chiron had interrupted, followed by a cranky Apollo and a flustered Poseidon.

The rest was history and there he was. Shipped to New Rome under an alias, banned from handling any type of weaponry, and forbidden contact with the oracle for life. He could still meet up with Rachel and apologized but if he pestered her about mother prophecy, Apollo swore he’d curse with the worst possible luck he could imagine. (As if his could get worse!)

But he couldn’t ignore this. Not when finally, the sign he’d been looking for might’ve appeared.

“Back there in the fire,” he started and he told them about everything. The monster, how the flames didn’t go out, how the enigmatic person appeared, and the little chat they had.

“…he didn’t talk much really, it kind seemed like he was waiting on me to say something, so when I just deadpanned the same words as before he’d only shook his head and muttered something under his head, like running some sort of calculation or maybe calling me names? Anyway, he had looked at me with an irritated frown and said ‘This is really not the time for us to meet. It’s still too soon.’ And then he’d start smiling in this really evil sort of way before saying, ‘Just know that I’m leading one of the new bands in town’ before knocking me out and vanishing.”

He caught his breath after finishing his rant and looked up expectant at the trio. His expression crumbled when he saw them all stare at him with eyes bursting with sympathy.

A moment of silence and no one said a word.

Annabeth was the first to break.

“For the sake of the Olympians and every other stinking god out three, Percy, could you get a grip!”

Her fists shook the bed he was lying on as she looked at him with tearful eyes.

“Can’t you see it! It’s over! It’s all finally fucking over and all you do is start acting like a madman and trotting off to look for danger. I mean, look at you, Percy! You’re sick, you’re starving, your hair’s a mess and y-y-your eyes are … _they are broken_ Percy! _Gone!”_

He watched in painful horror as she squeezed away a stray tear.

“Please, just let it all go…just let it all go and… _come back to me_.” She almost whispered the last words like those were for herself more than Percy. He swallowed in silence.

It was heart-breaking to see Annabeth in this state, even more heartbreaking knowing that he was the cause behind her pain. 

But those feelings did not against the wave of anger and indignance that washed over his senses. Why were they not listening? Why were they not seeing it? Why were they…they ignoring… …

He snapped back.

“I’m normal, fine, dandy even, Annabeth! At least I’m trying to be, okay! But it’s not working! _Nothing’s working_! But thi-this guy, there’s something fishy about him, there definitely is!” He desperately turned to Jason and Chiron. “C-come on, at least you think the same, right? Have the gods sensed anything stirring? Any visions from Rachel? A new camper, maybe…”

“God’s sake Percy, just stop. STOP.”

Annabeth was full-blown crying by now, wiping off streams of tears on her wrists.

“This isn’t a fight so don’t expect to win your way out all the time!”

She didn’t wait any longer after that and ran out of the cabin leaving three the three males behind. Chiron watched her leave and then looked at Percy with those kind, sympathetic eyes.

“Rest well, Percy, and no pressure. The worlds doing just fine. Praetor, if you would..”

Jason nodded and steered Chiron’s wheel-chair away before mouthing a silent good luck to Percy.

He stared at their backs until all he was staring at was the wooden door of his cabin. Deep deep brown.

There were too many things inside his head. So, e did the only thing he could.

He screamed.

He screamed and cried and suffocated on his own breath until he finally became numb enough for sleep to claim him.

He didn’t notice when that happened. All he would remember later was wishing for a happy dream, a happy dream where everyone was still alive.

Where he and Annabeth were still best friends and not the estranged lovers they’d become.

Where Jason still smiled brightly at piper and tried to imitate Leo’s puns while the maestro himself snickered at them from his tinkering corner.

Where Hazel’s eyes still shone bright and Frank awkwardly transformed into iguanas and goldfishes.

Where Nico would still shadowtraveled out of nowhere to drag his neck egging him go on some ridiculous and dangerous quest for no reason spouting big words about the greater good when the guy just didn’t know how to socialize like a normal person.

… …. ….A happy dream where everything was perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. We'll finally get to see the time rewind next chapter. R.I.P Sandra, Antaea and John, and the strawberry-haired weirdo who I probably won't be bringing into the story again. (Might change my mind tho).  
>  As you can see, this isn't going to be a regular rewind story and there's a plot working underneath it. As to what happened during the giant war, we'll get to know more about what happened in Percy's flashbacks. If you haven't figured it out already, I've killed Piper, Frank, Sally, Paul, Leo, and Nico among others. Like I said, you'll get more in flashbacks, including more insight into Percy and Nico's awkward friendship. ;).  
> I'll try to update the next chapter ASAP, hopefully, within two weeks. It's gonna be a tearjerker.   
> Néo ellinikó téras=new Greek monsters


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